Oatmeal Pancakes with Fresh Strawberries, Banana and Cashew Cream

I came up with this recipe, after a long and arduous battle trying to find the ‘perfect’ vegan and Gluten Free pancake. I have bought some pretty ones in the store, which have tasted more like ‘real’ pancakes, but you know these are loaded with lots of nasty or at least, not great ingredients. What I love about these pancakes, is that they are super simple, easy and quick to prepare and you know they are good, honest, wholefood ingredients. In fact, its only 2 ingredients, and I found this recipe completely by accident one day when I ran out of bread, and I was trying to make a nice simple ‘bread’ substitute for my then 6 month old baby. I have tried adding in a bunch of healthy ingredients to this recipe, like chia seeds, flax seeds etc to increase the nutritional value, but honestly, they always turn out better when I keep it simple.

The basic recipe and the one I would recommend, is:

1 cup of oats 1 banana 1 cup of water I add all the to the blender, whiz it up until nice and smooth, and then poor onto a baking sheet, I use either parchment paper or line the sheet with coconut oil to avoid them sticking, place in oven for 9 minutes on 350 degrees. They are cooked when they are firm to the touch. After a couple of minutes, they’ll be ready to take off the sheet.

Ok, so I love this recipe, and when my kids ask for pancakes, this is what they are expecting these days, these pancakes are not going to fool anyone, they are delicious, but they are a wholefood, they are not fluffy and light like regular pancakes, maybe I’ll find a recipe for those kind of pancakes in the future, but for now, we love these and we are happy with them. I’d love to hear what you think of them. (I made these for the in-laws yesterday, they liked them, but they said they weren’t like pancakes. I get that) I guess we have just been used to making a lot of substitutions and things being different to how they were traditionally.

Cashew Cream
If you’ve never tried this, you are missing out big time, this is the creme
de la creme, when it comes to cream, it is sugar free and loaded with
niacin (B3) rich cashew nuts, and tastes sweet and creamy like, well, erm,
cream. Pouring cream that is, which I never used to be a fan of (as a
vegetarian) but this delicious and vegan and my kids love it too.
Ingredients:
1 cup raw cashew nuts
8 pitted neglet nour dates
water or dairy free milk of choice.

Put them in the blender for a couple of minutes until smooth.
You will need to judge the amount of liquid you add based upon your
cream preference, some like it runny some a bit thicker, I don’t care with
this, its always been good whatever the consistency.

And hey, if you try this and you don’t like it (although that’s not very likely, in my opinion)
you can always just add it to a smoothie, it’ll add a creamy sweetness and
a bunch of extra nutrients to your smoothie, its a win-win.